Presently, a growing number of devices are being developed to take advantage of the Internet and e-mail communications. One example of such a device is a digital sender such as the HP 9100C from The Hewlett-Packard Company. Digital senders are devices which allow a user to send color and black-and-white documents (i.e., hard copies) via e-mail, as well as facsimile (fax). These senders are used in similar manner to conventional fax machines, wherein the user feeds the document that is to be sent into the device. Once fed into the device, the document is scanned and reduced to electronic form so that it can be sent to an e-mail and/or fax recipient. Sending documents with such a device has several advantages including increased speed, increased reliability, and higher resolution.
Digital senders currently are configured as free-standing units which can be connected to, for example, an office network such that several different people can use the sending device. When sending a document, the user normally must manually enter a destination e-mail address or fax number. In addition, the user can send a document to multiple persons by entering multiple e-mail addresses and/or fax numbers.
As can be appreciated by those familiar with e-mail communication, it can be tedious for a user to enter e-mail addresses, particularly where the user wishes to send to multiple parties. Although the user normally can store addresses in a personal address book (typically accessed by entry of a password), currently an external personal computer (PC) provided with appropriate software must be used to download this information to the sending device. Moreover, where the user fails to save his or her addresses and/or fax numbers when they are used, this information must be manually re-entered each time the sender sends to those addresses and/or fax numbers.
From the foregoing, it can be appreciated that it would be desirable to have means to more easily save sending information such as e-mail addresses and/or fax numbers for each user of a shared sending device. Moreover, it would be desirable to have a convenient means for each user to later access this sending information.